Weasley's Wizard Wheezes
by Corisanna
Summary: What started as an AP English exercise in character argument turned into a detailed Weasley vignette. Will the twins be able to convince their mother tp let them keep the joke shop for good?


A/N: I wrote this in June of 2002 as part of an AP English journal assignment. I wandered waaaay off from the prompt, but I think I created at least a decent little HP vignette. And since my teacher was a HP fanatic, I managed to get a B. So THERE to the mean, mean person who flamed me! The first posting of this story was by accident– it was not HTML formatted, etc etc, and looked absoballylutely awful– but I thought, when I saw I had uploaded it, "Oh well, I doubt anyone will take serious offense in the time it'll take me to fix that." As that was during finals week at college, it took a rather long time to fix. One person at least has been a sweetie; to this reviewer I say THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH! To Mr. Flamebody, BITE ME and go flame someone who did something like writing a boring, absolutely horrid story that is WORTH flaming. Don't get on my back for it being off-topic– why the hell would I post an essay in a fanfiction forum?! Anyway, gentle reader, remember that I love constructive criticism and that I wear fire-retardant clothing– you flame, you're retarded. Thank you and enjoy.

  
  


Prompt: _Create a situation with characters, one of whom is arguing for his right to keep something or someone while the others are trying to deprive this individual of this object or person. Note: I chose to write using Harry Potter characters, since the type of character was not specified._

The Great Debate: Weasley's Wizard Wheezes

The afternoon sunshine was brilliant in the small town of Ottery St. Catchpole. The sounds of summer filled the countryside, from the sweet chirping of birds in the trees to the lazy hum of cicadas in the underbrush. The mixed perfume of the fields of wildflowers, of tansy and honeysuckle, of primrose and jasmine, wafted on the fair breeze. The Muggle village and its surrounding countryside were the picture of the calm, quiet English hamlet, right down to its little, cozy-looking cottages. Quite the peaceful town, indeed.

And then there was the Burrow.

Looking at such a normal little burgh, one would never guess that the citizens of Ottery St. Catchpole had some very unusual neighbors, who lived in a very unusual house, and led very unusual lives. For the family that lived in the Burrow was a wizarding family by the name of Weasley.

The Burrow was rather a sight to behold. It looked as though its center had once been a large stone pigpen. Various rooms had been tacked on, stacked several stories high and leaning at the most insane of skewed angles, making the house look as if it had been constructed by a madman with a toddler's building blocks. Five red brick chimneys teetered and spiraled upward from the red roof. The whole thing was magicked together; how else would it have stayed standing? A jumble of galoshes and discarded wizardware was strewn about the front door, as well as what looked like an old, rusted cage for a pet of some sort. A large garden graced the backyard of the odd house, its untamed fringes only semi-weeded and its beds brimming with many a plant foreign to Muggle herbology. Odd little potato-headed men skulked through the hedgerows, dazed and dizzy from a recent de-gnoming. A heavy scent of chocolate announced that someone was baking something. It had been a rather uneventful morning at the Weasley household-- which meant, of course, that any and all troublemaking meant to take place across an entire day would instead take place in the afternoon. The sun had passed its zenith, and the mother of the Weasley family was on high alert.

Molly Weasley paced about the lower floor of the house, skimming through a page of _Cuire au Four_: Baking Like the French Muggle and absentmindedly watering houseplants with the help of her wand. She, mother of seven that she was, instinctively knew that at least one of her children was up to something. And since she hadn't heard any thumping or clanging or laughing, she could guess exactly which two were up to no good. She had just finished reading a paragraph about the necessity of quiet during the baking of chocolate soufflé when a loud explosion rocked the Burrow in its foundation, followed by the sound of the ghoul in the attic shrieking and banging pipes, as well as choking coughs of several teenagers. Mrs. Weasley whirled around and faced the Muggle oven her husband had given her for her birthday, eyes wide as she heard a temperamental "pfft!"

The soufflé was flat.

* * *

Two identical, freckle-faced, red-headed seventeen-year-old boys grinned as they huddled over a series of bubbling cauldrons on the long desk in their bedroom. The room looked more like a laboratory, actually. Potions ingredients were strewn everywhere, in jars and baskets, flasks and vats, arranged in _some_ ordering system that not even Hermione Granger herself could _ever_ hope to understand. Almost the only sign that the room was a bedroom at all was the secondhand Muggle bunk bed in the corner ("Bloody brilliant way to save space," the boys' father had gushed). Fred and George Weasley took careful note of the ingredients used in their secret concoctions. With boundless prank ideas in their minds and one thousand Galleons hidden beneath their bedroom floor, they had become quite seriously devoted to creating enough items to set up a small joke shop at the end of the upcoming school year. So it was that the twins were spending yet another summer holiday locked up in their room, toiling to make their dream, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, a reality.

And so it was that the two characters were fiddling about with a new type of firecracker, trying to figure out how to make it emit various vermin along with the customary sparks. Their only problem was getting the conjured pests to be able to survive the sparks. They were attempting to make the liquid inside somewhat less volatile, experimenting with various herbs and household ingredients, both magical and Muggle. As their younger brother Ron walked by their closed door, he could hear snatches of conversation such as "Oi, George, ...the powdered...?" and "Fred, where's the bloody beetles' eyes?" before there came a particularly loud exclamation of, "'Ey! I know! Floo!" Ron paused and simply stared at their door with its many signs ("Keep Out! Chinese Fireball Inside!" and "We Batty Beaters Beat Bludgers!"). There was a sound of scurrying, and of a jar being opened, some clinking, and then...

BOOM.

Ron leapt away from the door as it was flung open and two red-headed rockets blazed out of the room, followed by thick, acrid green smoke that rolled along the hallway. Ron soon followed his brothers as they pounded down the stairs, coughing horribly. It wasn't long before their sister, Ginny, was running down the stairs as well. She had her hands over her face as she ran, trying to suppress a mad fit of coughing, so she didn't see that her brothers had stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. She plowed right into Ron's back, creating a domino effect of sorts. The boys hardly noticed. They all stood staring straight ahead at their mum, who was standing stock-still with her back to them, facing the Muggle oven. Though the four teens had made quite a ruckus running into the kitchen, she did not acknowledge them. She was frozen, her wand in her right hand and an open book in her left, and apparently oblivious to her surroundings. Then, she slowly turned to face the children, who shrank and wilted under her gaze. The children froze and stared back at her, caught in her glare like flobberworms before a Hungarian Horntail. Smoke began to rise from behind her, only this smoke was from the remains of the poor soufflé.

Now, Molly Weasley was usually rather tolerant for a mother-- after all, what other mother would tend to ignore minor explosions in an upstairs bedroom for at least a decade? Smoke had filled the Burrow on numerous other occasions, and Mrs. Weasley had not seemed overly concerned. Annoyed, yes, perturbed, definitely, but never particularly furious, as long as the house and its inhabitants sustained no damage. But on this particular afternoon, she focused on the twins as though she were a basilisk on the hunt. She even hissed like one.

"Fred. George. Explosion. My. Sou. Flé," she hissed. The teens cringed-- it was always the worst when she spoke in monosyllables. "WHAT did you THINK you were DOING?"

Fred squirmed under his mother's venomous look. "Er, you see, Mum, eh, modifying the Roaring Rodent Firecrackers-- hafta work properly before they can go on the order li-- OOF!" George elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Molly advanced a step. Her children stepped back. "It's for that harebrained scheme of yours, isn't it, eh?! WHAT did I tell you about that silly joke shop?! How DARE you even THINK of that, after how poorly you did on your O.W.L.s! I will throw out ALL of your little experiments!"

Fred and George blanched in true fear. Ron and Ginny chose that moment to escape out the kitchen door and retreat to the garden. The twins looked as though they desperately wanted to follow on their heels, but they prepared to use their new argument.

"Well, Mum," began George, "about the O.W.L.s..."

"We used that as a sort of practice for the N.E.W.T.s," continued Fred.

"Now we know what to expect on them--"

"And properly prepare ourselves."

Mrs. Weasley dropped the cookbook on the kitchen table with a loud _thunk_. "Oh, _really_."

"Oh, yes, Mum, can't do very good business without credentials, you know," said Fred.

"Need to know our stuff, we do," added George.

"Besides, the world needs as much laughter as it can get."

"Especially now."

Mrs. Weasley raised a brow. "Oh? And why would that be, pray tell?"

The twins eyed one another for a moment, each silently thanking Harry Potter for giving them an excellent excuse at the end of the previous school year.

"Well, what with You-Know-Who coming back--"

"And seeing as people will get mighty gloomy when they find out--"

"When Fudge lets it out, that is--"

"Old git--"

"They'll need a distraction."

Mrs. Weasley lost some of the tenseness in her body; her eyes were less angry, and more appraising. The forgotten soufflé-- now undoubtedly a black rock in the oven-- still emitted smoke, but she didn't seem to notice. "And how do you expect to pay for the lot? Setting up a real business isn't like just selling contraband in the halls of Hogwarts."

The boys flinched.

"Eh heh heh heh... Who says we've ever done that?" asked Fred.

Mrs. Weasley rolled her eyes. "My sons, so responsible..."

George cut in before his mother could go off on a tangent. "Mum, money isn't a problem. We've acquired a--"

"Preliminary investor, and he's given us enough money to do two years of research and still have enough to bloody well open up shop as soon as we get out of Hogwarts. All he asked was to consider him a partner." Both boys grinned devilishly.

"Investor? One of your school friends, eh?" Mrs. Weasley asked, not sounding impressed.

"Yep."

Mrs. Weasley sighed. "I think you don't quite understand exactly how much it costs to start a business-- how could any student give you that kind of financial support?"

The boys grinned even wider. "Fred, I dunno, do you think she's right?"

"Dunno, George. Reckon she might be. Mums are wise, y'know."

"Right, should've known 'at almost a thousand Galleons wasn't enou--"

"A THOUSAND GALLEONS?!" screeched Mrs. Weasley. "WHERE IN MERLIN'S NAME DID A CHILD GET A THOUSAND GALLEONS?!"

George smirked. "Think, Mum."

Molly thought. Or tried to. The words "thousand Galleons" were flying about her head on Firebolts. She was dazed, to say the least. She plopped down into a chair at the table and looked at her sons. The wacky ones. "How...?"

Fred just smiled. "Well, don't tell Ronniekins, but a certain friend of the family said that he personally wanted _us_ to make people happy." Molly just stared.

George raised his brows. "Certain friend with black hair--"

Fred sniggered. "And eyes as green as a fresh pickled toad."

Molly gasped. "No! He did not give his money to you! After all he did for it?"

George became solemn. "Really, Mum, we tried to make him keep it, but he said he didn't want it."

Fred frowned. "Said he didn't want it, and wouldn't use it anyway, and that it was what he wanted to happen with the money-- just make people happy."

Mrs. Weasley's eyes began to water, and she turned to the smoking oven and finally shut it off. All the twins could hear her say was something about "That Boy." She didn't say anything further, and kept her back to them. The kitchen was silent except for the sounds of their mother tidying up the now-sooty Muggle oven. Finally, George ventured, "So... we can keep the Wheezes?"

She waved a rag at them over her shoulder and said in a disgruntled voice, "Oh, get upstairs and clean up, you two! I don't want to see a single sign of ANYTHING outside that pig sty you call your room--!"

The twins bounded gleefully out of the kitchen and up the stairs, behaving as though they had won the Quidditch World Cup by their own two selves.


End file.
